London Town

Sorry for not posting the past several days. Between jet lag and everyone in Edmonton being sick, with both colds and the flu, it's been a very hectic week. I've been craving the opportunity to get back in front of the computer and show off some of my photos from London Town.

I  arrived in London last Monday (May 31) It was a decent flight, but you know how it is, by the time you deplane, go through immigration and collect your bags, you have some how wasted an extra two hours. After a quick stop at the hotel to check-in and change, I hit the streets with Nicole, a friend of mine from high-school. Nicole has a UK passport now, so she is living and working in Brighton which she tells me she is enjoying very much.

It took us some time to figure out the trains and the tube, but we managed to find our way down to Westminster Station, which is right on the river Thames downtown. The first thing we saw when emerging from the tube station...

Big Ben...well, actually, Big Ben is only the name of the bell inside the clock tower. Properly the tower is referred to as the Tower of Westminster Palace. Westminster Palace is the proper name for the parliament buildings. We got a great view of the palace and the rest of London from atop the London Eye.

The London Eye is truly enormous. I had seen pictures in the past and just thought it was another over sized ferris wheel, but it is humongous, standing some 135 meters. When it was constructed eleven years ago, it was the tallest ferris wheel in the world. Today it is surpassed only by the Star of Nanchang and the Singapore Flyer. The London Eye has thirty-two capsules all of which are air condition and can hold up to twenty-five people. The wheel never stops moving; it turns at a slow enough pace to allow rapid unloading and loading.

Along with Nicole and I inside of our capsule, there was a group of German tourists. Among them was one incredibly cute Arab guy. He was going around to all of the girls in the capsule saying, with his hilarious German accent "Hello, I am German. I have no friends. Will you take a photo with me?" After he finished with the girls, he came over to me and hesitated for a moment before repeating the same thing. I obliged both him and his somewhat less handsome friend.

 

It was somewhat difficult to get clear shots from the capsules because of the glare from the glass, but here are a few of the better ones.

A nice view of the Waterloo Bridge and the North Shore. The National Theatre is the hideous cement building on the South Shore.

This is a view of Whitehall (government administration) and part of central London.

Here you can see Westminster Abbey on the left just behind the clock tower, as well as Her Majesty's Treasury on the right behind Westminster Station.

More to come...